21st Century Victorians

To my elders,

When E told me the title of this blog, it reminded me of that line. Whistling in the Dark. And I think its well suited, because I think it represents a lot of what our culture does. Blogging. Vlogging. Tweeting. Status updates. They are all ways of Whistling in the Dark. Of bringing some light, some understanding, some connection, to a world that can very easily become isolated. We live in a world where privacy is so important it can isolate us.

I think in many ways, our high tech world of social media and texting and YouTube having the most searches of any website, we are, in a way, going back in time. To a time when simple letters were delivered between friends. When we would share our lives with the people who knew us. When everyone in our little town would know everything about us. When past actions were not so easily forgotten and swept away. When we learned things by seeing them, by asking questions, and by seeking information from those around us.

Now, obviously, nowadays this is mediated by a computer. By a digital world that operates in 1s and 0s. But somehow, we have turned this tool, this scary, powerful, limited tool, into something so human as a way to connect with other people.

Some people look at amodern technology and become convinced that it is changing how we communicate and socialise. Because for some reason, the standards of all social interactions are based in the 1950s. But before that, before secretaries and telephones and textbook learning, we saw peoples faces when we spoke. We wrote to each other, instead of talking on the phone. And we watched something being done before doing it ourselves. We didn't just try to picture it.

So picture that. The world made just a little more magical, a little more human, and way more connected than our pundits believe.

-K